Mocs relish preview with Lee
The new-look University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team got its first taste of outside competition last week in a closed scrimmage.
Although tonight’s game — like last Saturday’s — won’t count, it will be another opportunity. And this time it’ll be in front of fans.
The Mocs host NCAA Division II member Lee University tonight at 7 at McKenzie Arena in their final tune-up before the season officially starts Tuesday at Charlotte. This follows the closed scrimmage against Middle Tennessee State, which UTC narrowly won. MTSU’s Blue Raiders lost all five starters from last season’s 25-8 team as well as head coach Kermit Davis, who left for Ole Miss. Like the Mocs, their roster returned very little with only three scholarship players who combined to average 7.8 points per game back for this season.
With 10 new players on the roster but only eight total available against the Blue Raiders, some Mocs logged more minutes than usual. Coach Lamont Paris said the team usually watches tape after every practice but had so much to digest that he broke down Saturday’s video into two parts.
He did come away pleased with the performance.
“The biggest thing I wanted to evaluate is how hard
we play, how hard we try to do what we want to do, and I thought we did a really good job of that,” Paris said. “I thought we competed. We handled a couple of things well and there’s a lot of learning, but there was so much stuff we could learn from — good, bad, indifferent.”
The video study provided a different look for the players, but for the coaches as well.
“It’s huge because teams guard things differently than we do,” Paris said. “As a player you see the same thing every day defensively, but it’s also good because it gives some validity. You don’t know if things are working because of matchups. To get out there when guys don’t know things, it’s good to see some things worked really well, and exposed some things.
“Overall there’s a lot to be taken away.”
After the Mocs spent the past few months going up against each other, that scrimmage — as will tonight’s exhibition — let them go against somebody they don’t see every day in the locker room. It was a welcome experience. “It’s way different for all of us than what we’ve been through,” UTC junior guard Jonathan Scott said. “The adjustment to the physicality and speed of the game is a big deal; figuring out where to get buckets and ways to defend different things is all included.
“I was just so excited to go against someone else. It gave us a different look and made us have to think more. It was different defensively, different offensively, but it was really good and we learned a lot.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.